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I was scrolling around on my radio and came across an interesting conversation on 7.200 MHz. There were saying something about how Biden is using food stamps to launder money from China. I checked back a few days later and there were more crazy conspiracy theories being discussed. I looked the frequency up on YouTube and found recordings of similar conversations. Is there some conspiracy theory net here or something?

owabs
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  • People talk about what they want. Conspiracy theories are at least more interesting than medical event of the week. As long as it isn't illegal (and some of those are explicitly listed in part 97), nobody's gonna do anything about it. And encryption isn't allowed...so who knows who is listening and taking notes. – user10489 Jun 12 '23 at 10:59
  • 75 meters has long been known for old cranky white men. I wouldn't be surprised if you find similar conversations there. – Duston Jun 18 '23 at 23:03

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I'm looking at your question and look for the core question that would not be super specific to where you are and obsolete in a month. I think I hit the core of your question when I abstract it as:

US Ham radio operators are not as diverse group as they could be. Especially, forming a bubble among old white men, selected furthermore by low frequency bands to those who own land, has a potential for forming political fringe groups. Should this be a wide societal concern?

To an European, that food stamp money laundry conspiracy is outright hilarious, but seriously, conspiracist gonna conspire, no matter the medium.

Considering the total number of licensed radio amateurs in the US is below 800,000, any mediocry-sized internet forum, subreddit, discord server... would be a larger "conspiracy theory net". As relevant as ham radio appears to us here, we mustn't forget that it absolutely is a marginally popular hobby - only 0.23% of US-Americans are operators!

As such, we can assume that the people who take to the air and ragchew about such topics certainly have a detrimental effect on the attractiveness of operating these bands. But in the larger scheme of things, these are probably a handful of retirees - not a nationwide trend.

That being said, people spreading conspiracy theories is dangerous; I don't know FCC rules, but there's limits to freedom of speech on the airwaves (as elsewhere!). Typically, my freedom ends where the safety of someone else begins; pretty sure that things like instigating violence are universally forbidden.

Marcus Müller
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